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ACC AM Feb 17
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California Utility Agrees to Pay $922,000, Remove, Replace Equipment, Clean PCBs
Feb 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The Imperial Irrigation District has agreed to spend $922,000 to resolve allegations that it improperly disposed of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at a former electricity substation in Brawley, Calif., under a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency. -
A Cancer Cluster Is Tough to Prove
Feb 17, 2015 | The New York Times
By George Johnson
Last month, thousands of Marines and their families were blocked in federal court from pursuing their claim that the government had given them cancer. The decision, involving people exposed to contaminated drinking water while stationed at Camp Lejeune, a base in North Carolina, didn’t consider the science. -
Small Earthquakes Linked To Fracking Could Lead To Major Ones, Government Scientist Says
Feb 16, 2015 | Climate Progress
By Katie Valentine
The earthquakes that have been linked to oil and gas development so far might be minor, but they could be putting states like Oklahoma and Kansas at risk for a major earthquake later on, new research indicates. The research, which hasn’t yet been published, was presented at the American Association for the Advancement... -
States Drag Their Feet on Congressman's Frack Waste Investigation
Feb 16, 2015 | InsideClimate News
By David Hasemyer
A Pennsylvania congressman wanted to know how his state and two neighboring states oversee the disposal of the often toxic waste generated by fracking oil-and-gas wells. Now, Matthew Cartwright has some answers, and he finds them late–and lacking. Cartwright, a Democrat from eastern Pennsylvania, launched the investigation... -
Building Our Arctic Future
Feb 16, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Andreas Kuersten
The United States’ Arctic infrastructure is severely lacking – as is meaningful policy discussion concerning its development. Amid steadily growing opportunities, activity, and vessel traffic in the region, this situation is becoming increasingly untenable. Current Arctic capabilities are unable to accommodate domestic pursuits... -
Christie Says Tax Overhaul, Energy at Top of His National Agenda
Feb 16, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Heather Haddon
Gov. Chris Christie said overhauling the tax system and developing a comprehensive energy policy would be his top issues if he became president. The policy goals were the first explicit statements on a national agenda that Mr. Christie has given as he considers a campaign for the White House. -
Can Science Solve Climate Change?
Feb 16, 2015 | The Washington Post
What happens if humans fail to cut carbon dioxide emissions enough to prevent worsening climate change? A new report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences contemplates some very unattractive — but potentially necessary — backup plans. -
Oil Train Derailments Renew Questions About Safety
Feb 16, 2015 | LA Times
By Ralph Vartabedian
The derailments this week of two trains carrying crude oil have raised new questions about the adequacy of federal efforts to improve the safety of moving oil on tank cars from new North American wells to distant refineries. A 100-car, southbound CSX train derailed Monday in a West Virginia river valley, destroying a home... -
Oil Tanker Derails In West Virginia, Triggering Evacuations
Feb 16, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Kris Maher
A train carrying crude oil derailed and burst into a fireball in rural West Virginia on Monday, forcing residents to evacuate and sending oil leaking into a river. At least one tanker car, and possibly more, fell into the Kanawha River, some 30 miles from the state capital of Charleston. -
West Virginia Train Derailment Sends Oil Tanker Into River
Feb 16, 2015 | AP (in The Sacramento Bee)
By John Raby and Jonathan Mattise
A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed during a snowstorm in southern West Virginia on Monday, sending at least one tanker into a river, igniting at least 14 in all and sending a fireball hundreds of feet into the sky, officials and residents said.
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California Utility Agrees to Pay $922,000, Remove, Replace Equipment, Clean PCBs
Feb 16, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The Imperial Irrigation District has agreed to spend $922,000 to resolve allegations that it improperly disposed of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at a former electricity substation in Brawley, Calif., under a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency.
EPA Region 9 officials announced the administrative consent agreement and order on Feb. 12.
The consent order includes a $379,000 penalty against the utility and a supplemental environmental project valued at $543,000, the EPA said in a news release.
“Today's settlement means Imperial Irrigation District will be taking steps to counter the impacts of its legacy PCB contamination in several local communities,” EPA Region 9 Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said.
The agreement and order gives Imperial Irrigation a year to replace PCB-containing regulators, transformers and circuit breakers at its active facilities with equipment that contains no PCBs. The utility has 17 months to complete an audit of nine inactive substations in Brawley, Calexico, Indio, Mecca and El Centro to identify and remove all PCB-containing equipment and test soils at the properties.
Soils with PCBs levels in excess of the federal limit under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 50 parts per million must be cleaned up, according to the agreement.
“We are pleased that we were able to work with the EPA and come to a mutual agreement on this issue,” Marion Champion, a spokeswoman for the utility, told Bloomberg BNA in a Feb. 13 e-mail. “By negotiating the settlement we were able to reduce the civil penalties and put those dollars back into our system by replacing older equipment with new PCB-free equipment that will serve our customers for years to come.”
The Imperial Irrigation District provides power to more than 145,000 customers in the Imperial Valley and parts of Riverside County.
TSCA Violations Alleged
The enforcement action, which alleged violations of TSCA, stemmed from an environmental assessment the utility commissioned of its Rio Vista Electricity Substation in 2011 that found levels of PCBs as highs 363 ppm in soils at the facility.
Imperial Irrigation closed the facility in 2002 and removed all the old electrical equipment, the EPA said. But PCBs had leaked from the equipment, leaving behind tainted soils at the site next to an elementary school, the agency said.
The EPA said it oversaw the utility's cleanup of the property, which involved the removal and disposal of 10,000 pounds of PCB-contaminated soils.
The EPA banned the production of PCBs in 1979. PCBs are man-made chemicals, once widely used in a variety of products and materials including electrical equipment. Exposure to PCBs has been linked to cancer and other adverse health effects on the immune, nervous, reproductive and endocrine systems, according to the EPA.
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A Cancer Cluster Is Tough to Prove
Feb 17, 2015 | The New York Times
By George Johnson
Last month, thousands of Marines and their families were blocked in federal court from pursuing their claim that the government had given them cancer. The decision, involving people exposed to contaminated drinking water while stationed at Camp Lejeune, a base in North Carolina, didn’t consider the science.
Long before expert witnesses could be called to testify, a United States Court of Appeals let stand its earlier ruling that the lawsuit had come too late. It failed to meet the requirements of a state statute banning claims arising more than 10 years after the final occurrence of a harmful act.
The genetic mutations that cause cancer can take decades to manifest themselves, far longer than the North Carolina statute of repose allowed. But the laws we cobble together often trump those of science. And even when legal obstacles can be overcome, a link between a cancer and environmental pollutants is exceedingly difficult to establish, whether in a laboratory or a court of law
In past investigations, only two residential cancer clusters in the country have been linked, though only weakly, to environmental toxins. Camp Lejeune has become the third.The plaintiffs in the lawsuit lived at the base at various times from the 1950s through 1985, a period when the drinking water was polluted with dry-cleaning fluid, organic solvents and benzene — chemicals on the National Toxicology Program’s list of known and probable carcinogens.
Even so, epidemiological studies published last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Camp Lejeune’s rate of cancer mortality was lower than that of the general public — 1,078 cases among the Marines during a 10-year period, when 1,272 would have been expected in a population that size.
That would ordinarily seem to rule out a cancer cluster. Epidemiologists, however, suspected that the numbers might have been distorted by a “healthy soldier” or “healthy veteran” effect. The military and their kin may receive better medical care than most people, making them less likely to die prematurely from cancer. To allow for that possibility, cancer deaths at Camp Lejeune were compared with those at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, where there was no water contamination. It was then that hints of a problem appeared.
Over all, Marines who had served at Lejeune were 10 percent more likely to die from cancer than their counterparts at Pendleton. Deaths from kidney cancer, for example, were 35 percent more likely. Altogether, 16 of 21 types of cancer showed modest increases at Lejeune.
Most of these conditions are rare enough that the absolute number of excess deaths was low — 42 from kidney cancer, for example, when 36 was considered average. For multiple myeloma, the increased risk was razor thin: 17 deaths at Lejeune, when 16 would have been expected. (Similar results were found in a separate study involving the base’s civilians.)
The more unusual a cancer, the harder it is to separate genuine influences from statistical noise. Especially puzzling were some 80 Lejeune veterans who came forward with diagnoses of male breast cancer, some at an unusually early age. The annual incidence of this condition is about 1.4 cases per 100,000 men — about 1 percent of the rate for women.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Hundreds of thousands of men may have been exposed, for various lengths of time, to Camp Lejeune water. Whether that is enough to implicate the pollution is still under consideration.
Investigations of other suspected cancer outbreaks have been even less clear-cut. Over the years, state and federal epidemiologists have looked into hundreds of incidents in which people have reported what they feared were unusually high concentrations of cancer. Only a fraction of these turned out to be genuine anomalies, with cancer rates that were actually higher than demographics would suggest.
Of these outliers, only two were ultimately associated with an environmental agent. The rest of the clusters apparently occurred by chance, like stars forming constellations in the sky.
Among the places that didn’t make the cut were Love Canal, N.Y., which was the original Superfund site, and Hinkley, Calif., the subject of the movie “Erin Brockovich.”
Clusters involving factory workers are more common — the exposures are more intense. But you can scour the records and find only two cases in recent history in which environmental contaminants may have caused a blip in the cancer rate: a small increase in the number of childhood leukemias in Woburn, Mass., featured in the movie “A Civil Action,” and in Toms River, N.J.
In both investigations, a wisp of a pattern emerged when the data was parsed just so. In Woburn, a few extra cases occurred among boys, and in Toms River among girls. Nothing known about the biology of leukemia could explain why the carcinogens in question would have exhibited a preference for gender, leading to doubts that the clusters were real.
Biologists tell us that cancer is caused by an accumulation of genetic mutations — tiny distortions in a cell’s DNA that retool it into a viciously replicating machine. Some of the mutations are inherited, some are inflicted by outside agents, and some are simply copying errors that occur spontaneously as a body’s cells divide.
Pollutants add to the burden. But no matter how carcinogenic they are, the doses most people receive can hardly compare with the thick concentration of chemical waste inhaled, minute after minute, by cigarette smokers into the microscopic depths of their lungs. To get that kind of exposure, you would have to hook a tube to a factory smokestack and breath the fumes for years, or subject yourself to an intravenous drip of toxic sludge.
None of this means that the spillage of manufactured chemicals is not a problem or that polluters should not be fined and jailed. Some epidemiologists suspect that synthetic carcinogens are giving many people cancer, but at levels that their mathematical tools cannot detect.
Judging from the evidence, the former residents of Camp Lejeune may have a stronger argument than the people of Woburn and Toms River did, but only if their lawyers can find a way to get the case back into court.
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Small Earthquakes Linked To Fracking Could Lead To Major Ones, Government Scientist Says
Feb 16, 2015 | Climate Progress
By Katie Valentine
The earthquakes that have been linked to oil and gas development so far might be minor, but they could be putting states like Oklahoma and Kansas at risk for a major earthquake later on, new research indicates.
The research, which hasn’t yet been published, was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science by U.S. Geological Survey scientist William Ellsworth. Ellsworth said that states in which small, hydraulic fracturing-related earthquakes are a fairly regular occurrence shouldn’t “expect a large earthquake tomorrow,” but they should know that these small earthquakes could increase the risk of a larger, more damaging one occurring eventually.
“The more small earthquakes we have, it just simply increases the odds we’re going to have a more damaging event,” Ellsworth said.
The process of extracting oil and gas has been linked by multiple studies to increased incidence of small earthquakes. Many of these studies blame the process of wastewater injection, a process in which oil and gas companies pump the wastewater used in fracking wells deep underground. The injection of the water can increase fluid pressure underground, making it easier for faults to slip and cause an earthquake. According to one study, nearly all of the 2,500 earthquakes that occurred over a five-year span in Oklahoma could be linked to the wastewater injection process.
But fracking itself — which involves injecting water, chemicals, and sand underground to break apart shale and unlock natural gas deposits — has also been found to have triggered earthquakes: an October 2014 study concluded that 400 small earthquakes in Ohio were triggered by fracking.
And earlier this year, scientists proved for the first time that an earthquake strong enough to be felt by humans was triggered by fracking. The magnitude 3.0 earthquake that occurred in Ohio was, study co-author Robert Skoumal said, one of “the largest earthquakes ever induced by hydraulic fracturing in the United States.”
The degree to which fracking and wastewater injection has contributed to earthquake numbers is, in some states, striking. Last year, Oklahoma experienced three times more magnitude 3.0 and higher earthquakes than California did, with wastewater injection likely being the main driver. And a report last year found that, as oil and gas activity has increased in Ohio, so have earthquakes: between 1950 and 2009, Ohio saw an average of two greater than 2.0 magnitude earthquakes each year. When fracking operations began becoming more common in the state, between 2010 and 2014, that number jumped to an average of nine per year. Nationally, the report found, the country experienced an average of 100 magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes each year between 2010 and 2012, compared to just 21 each year between 1967 and 2000.
Mark Zoback, a geophysicist at Stanford University, told Science Magazine that, when it comes to wastewater injection, there are things the oil and gas industry can do to minimize the risk of earthquakes: namely, injecting wasteswater into regions that aren’t near fault lines, or skipping the injection altogether and recycling the water.
Scientists have warned before that the earthquake risks posed by fracking and wastewater injection could get worse: last May, scientists at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting said that fracking-induced earthquakes could get stronger and more dangerous in the coming years.
“I think ultimately, as fluids propagate and cover a larger space, the likelihood that it could find a larger fault and generate larger seismic events goes up,” Western University earth sciences professor Gail Atkinson said last year at the meeting.
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States Drag Their Feet on Congressman's Frack Waste Investigation
Feb 16, 2015 | InsideClimate News
By David Hasemyer
A Pennsylvania congressman wanted to know how his state and two neighboring states oversee the disposal of the often toxic waste generated by fracking oil-and-gas wells.
Now, Matthew Cartwright has some answers, and he finds them late–and lacking.
Cartwright, a Democrat from eastern Pennsylvania, launched the investigation in his state last October. A month later, he expanded his inquiry to Ohio and West Virginia.
Responses from two states failed to provide substantive, detailed information to the congressman while one state has ignored the request.
Among the issues Cartwright raised:
How each state inspects oil-and-gas waste facilities.
What information the states require to pinpoint what's in the waste.
An explanation of the process for handling complaints regarding fracking waste disposal.
Answers to those questions are important for both residents and the environment in regions that are disposing of huge quantities of fracking waste, Cartwright said in an email interview.
"States continually argue that this is a state's issue and they can best handle it," Cartwright said. "We are simply asking states to please provide a little more insight into how they handle this issue and more importantly, how they enforce their own regulations.
"We believe that these states may not be adequately disposing of potentially hazardous waste."
A representative of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency did not respond to InsideClimate News calls and questions about why the agency has failed to reply to Cartwright. The agency was given a Dec. 3 deadline.
West Virginia officials recently assured Cartwright they are properly monitoring oil-and-gas waste. Pennsylvania administrators met the deadline but provided only broad answers.
In a two-page letter to Cartwright sent after InsideClimate News inquired about why a Dec. 3 deadline was missed, a West Virginia official told the congressman that the waste ends up in properly regulated facilities.
Randy C. Huffman, cabinet secretary for the state's EPA, did not specifically address Cartwright’s questions or provide data sought by the congressman.
"West Virginia has several regulations in place to address proper disposal of the waste associated with oil and gas operations," Huffman told Cartwright.
In the letter, Huffman briefly explained to Cartwright that drilling waste must be disposed of in landfill cells specifically constructed for oil-and-gas waste, and the agency has established limits on the amount of toxins allowed in the waste.
Huffman also told Cartwright his agency is working with the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources on a study of radiation levels of drilling waste. That information will be provided to the state legislature later in the year, Huffman said.
Huffman's letter did not indicate the agency intends any further response to Cartwright.
A Deadline, a Dearth of Details
Pennsylvania officials met Cartwright's Nov. 12 deadline with a five-page response that provided the state’s policy positions on many of his questions. The agency generally explained its reporting requirements for the following: oil-and-gas waste facilities; mandatory chemical analysis of waste; and state inspection standards for waste facilities. It also included an explanation of enforcement rules.
"Pennsylvania's residual waste regulations provide a comprehensive approach for managing waste from the point of generation to transportation, processing, recycling and disposal," said the letter signed by Dana Aunkst, the former acting secretary of Pennsylvania’s EPA. (He is now the agency’s executive deputy secretary for programs.)
Aunkst explained that it would take considerable time to provide specific answers to Cartwright’s questions, but pledged cooperation if more information was required.
The replies have prompted Cartwright, a member of the House Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs, to seek meetings with committee staff in the coming weeks to discuss ways to get the information, according to a Cartwright staff member.
As a minority member of the committee, Cartwright must rely on the voluntary cooperation of the state agencies. To compel disclosure through subpoenas would require the support of the Republican majority, assistance that seems unlikely.
Cartwright identified the three states as objects of his Congressional investigation because they generate waste from hydraulic fracturing––or fracking––as well as accepting waste from other states. Fracking is the process of blasting a mixture of water, chemicals and sand down a well to break open shale to extract fossil fuels.
Cartwright's growing inquiry mirrors the increasing national concern about the disposal of oil-and-gas waste generated by fracking.
In letters to the heads of the three states' environmental protection agencies, Cartwright said fracking waste can "cause harm to human health and the environment" if not properly handled.
Cartwright, who is beginning his second term, also wants to determine whether the three states are following the federal Clean Air Act, which mandates protection from airborne contaminants.
Cartwright cites a 2011 minority staff report of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It identified 29 chemicals found in fracking waste that are possible human carcinogens, and are regulated under both the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act for their risks to human health.
The report identified benzene, toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene as being among the chemicals found in fracking products. Each of those compounds is a contaminant under the Safe Drinking Water Act and a hazardous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Benzene also is a known human carcinogen.
An investigation published last year by InsideClimate News found that in most states where fracking is taking place, air emissions from oil-and-gas waste are among the least regulated, least monitored and least understood components in the extraction-and-production cycle.
No Mandate, No Monitoring
The representative also wants answers to more than a dozen other questions related to the way the states ensure health and environmental safety.
"The Subcommittee minority is conducting this oversight to determine if state regulations and monitoring of fracking waste are sufficient to ensure accuracy, completeness and compliance with applicable environmental laws," Cartwright said in the letters.
But the request has not elicited the answers Cartwright sought.
David Brown, a toxicologist at the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, said he suspects one of the reasons for the snub is that the state agencies simply don't have the information.
"You hope someone is paying attention to things like this," he said, "but that's not always the case."
Brown suggests one of the reasons for some of the states' indifference is an absence of federal requirements for tracking and regulating the waste.
Consequently, he said, states don’t closely regulate oil-and-gas waste because such oversight is not mandated. And in many cases, even if they wanted to undertake the job, they don’t have adequate resources, he said.
Not regulating the waste is a huge failing, Brown said.
"It's important to know what’s in this material because some it can be highly toxic," Brown said. "If these toxic substances get into the ground water or into the air, they can be very dangerous."
Some of the compounds in oil-and-gas waste have been linked to cancer, or contribute to respiratory and neurological illnesses.
It's dangerous to remain uninformed of the exact makeup and concentrations of chemicals in oil-and-gas waste, Brown said. He cites leaded gasoline as an example.
It took decades for the threat to human health posed by the toxicity of leaded fuel became known, he said.
"The implication of exposing the population to chemicals that you don't know much about is a dangerous thing," Brown said. "From a public health perspective, they ought to know what’s going on."
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Feb 16, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Andreas Kuersten
The United States’ Arctic infrastructure is severely lacking – as is meaningful policy discussion concerning its development. Amid steadily growing opportunities, activity, and vessel traffic in the region, this situation is becoming increasingly untenable. Current Arctic capabilities are unable to accommodate domestic pursuits, ensure their safety and security, protect the environment, or uphold international responsibilities.
Growing activity in Arctic waters is being spurred by the forces of climate change, which are exposing the region’s considerable resources. These include: massive energy reserves, fisheries, and sea-lanes that offer significantly reduced shipping distances and costs. Such opportunities are enticing Arctic ventures and vessel traffic, and more ships and cargo translate into a greater need for infrastructure and higher risk of accidents. Unfortunately, however, the Coast Guard reports that “there is very limited infrastructure” in the American Arctic.
Government action to remedy this deficiency has thus far failed to materialize. President Obama’s recent actions seek to enhance the coordination of U.S. Arctic activities and protect the environment, but present no concrete plans for improving the country’s physical presence or competences in the region.
Pundits have similarly failed to adequately address the situation and focus almost exclusively on the broad debate over Arctic extraction versus conservation. Certainly, this is an important discussion, but the region will ultimately experience a mixture of these approaches. Portions will be open to industry while others are protected. Regardless, any Arctic policy is only as good as the resources and capabilities backing it. No course is viable without significant upgrades in infrastructure.
An important positive step in this regard is the construction of an Arctic deep-water port. This facility will bolster national capacity by providing safe harbor for larger vessels, handling greater scale maintenance and resupplying, and serving as a command and coordination hub for all activities and actors. The most promising project working towards this goal is the three-year Alaska Deep-Draft Arctic Port System Study (Port Study), a joint state-federal project with Alaska that commenced in 2012. Its purpose is to assess possible deep-water port locations along the west and northern coasts of the state.
In January, the study recommended Nome, a transshipment hub just south of the Bering Strait and approximately 140 miles south of the Arctic Circle with a population of roughly 3,800 people. As a regional center, Nome is already relatively developed and has the only port north of Dutch Harbor – approximately 730 miles south – able to handle medium-sized vessels. But this port is overworked and unable to meet the demands of larger ships, which are forced to anchor away from the harbor.
The Port Study also presented a rough design, cost, and benefits analysis for construction. It estimates roughly $69 million in initial net benefits and approximately $2.3 million in net annual benefits.
As the Port Study concludes later this year, its complete findings and recommendations will be turned into funding proposals for Alaska and Congress. Passage at the state level is relatively certain given Alaska’s sustained desire for a northern deep-water port. But approval by Washington is more complex. Theoretically, the project should have broad appeal. Whether legislators want to conserve or utilize the Arctic, this port is a positive.
However, two similar federal bills recently died in committee. A 2013 act would have authorized and funded the Secretary of the Army in setting up an Arctic deep-water port. A 2014 act would have conveyed land above Nome to the Coast Guard, Alaska, and natives to partner in the construction of such a port.
A key impediment to passage could be cost given congressional weariness of spending in a time of relative fiscal conservatism. The 2013 act involved only federal funding, while the 2014 act did not address financial responsibility. The Port Study hopefully mitigates this unease. As a joint state-federal project, its costs are shared. This establishes precedent for future port construction expense allocation. While Washington will likely fund the majority of any project, Alaska’s contribution will be substantial.
Along with cost, political jockeying may also be a factor holding back port funding. Prudent thinking can be derailed by the pervasive partisanship of Capitol Hill depending on bill sponsorship and impressions.
But the most substantial obstacle is likely indifference. Too few legislators are meaningfully discussing Arctic investment, much less specific projects. This may be for several reasons. First, despite its potential, the Arctic offers minimal investment and political returns in the near term. Substantial development is needed and areas are still largely difficult and expensive to access.
Second, the immediate beneficiaries of investment are almost exclusively in Alaska. While outlays will benefit the entire country in the long-term, Alaskan communities will receive almost all short-term gains. This limits the political appeal for legislators without constituencies in “The Last Frontier.”
To counter this, actors with significant interest in Arctic development must speak up. This includes the oil and gas industries and environmental groups. Though traditionally enemies, both stand to benefit from additional Arctic infrastructure, and, specifically, an Arctic deep-water port. Industry costs and access to resources would lessen and expand, respectively, and environmental groups would gain facilities to adequately monitor and respond to environmental situations.
While a drastic national turn toward the Arctic is inappropriate, some meaningful attention is necessary. The U.S. must prepare for when the region’s full economic potential is accessible, make access possible, and capably protect the environment as human activity increases. An Arctic deep-water port would aid all of these endeavors. Hopefully, when presented with the Port Study’s findings and recommendations later this year, legislators will give them keen attention and act to secure an important future contributor to America’s energy security, environmental wealth, and economic growth.
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Christie Says Tax Overhaul, Energy at Top of His National Agenda
Feb 16, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Heather Haddon
Gov. Chris Christie said overhauling the tax system and developing a comprehensive energy policy would be his top issues if he became president.
The policy goals were the first explicit statements on a national agenda that Mr. Christie has given as he considers a campaign for the White House.
Mr. Christie didn’t elaborate on how he would change U.S. tax policy but said that more needed to be done federally to encourage economic growth beyond the current pace, which he termed “anemic.”
“Within the first 100 days, if I would run for president and be elected, we would change this tax system in this country,” said Mr. Christie, before a crowd of Republican activists gathered for an annual fundraising dinner.
As for energy policy, Mr. Christie said the U.S. needs a national policy that takes “full advantage of all resources” available in the U.S.
Mr. Christie, a New Jersey Republican, also said he would promote American leadership around the world by reaffirming relationships with allies and making clear to adversaries that the U.S. won’t stand for threats.
“The president had the audacity to say terrorism is on the run,” said Mr. Christie, who spent a sizable chunk of his 32-minute speech attacking President Barack Obama on foreign policy. “Does terrorism look like it’s on the run?”
Mr. Christie’s address before the local Concord and Merrimack County Republican Party’s Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner provided a receptive audience for the Northeast governor. He received a standing ovation after his speech and several rounds of applause during his address.
Some attendees said they were impressed by Mr. Christie’s rhetorical skills and what the described as a straightforward manner.
“He’s really well-spoken,” said Jamie Burnett, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire. “He has a way of taking big, complicated issues and making a personal connection.”
Mr. Christie was asked to comment on several controversial issues in the state.
Asked about his support of federal legislation allowing states to collect taxes on Internet purchases, Mr. Christie said that he didn’t think the federal government should dictate sales-tax policy and that it should be left to individual states to decide whether to pursue the option. New Hampshire collects no sales tax.
“States get to make their own call on that, and if New Hampshire doesn’t want one, that’s up to them,” Mr. Christie said.
Mr. Christie also spoke of his concerns about federal involvement in local public schools when asked about the Common Core education standards. But he said that he supports standardized testing.
“We need to have absolute standards,” Mr. Christie said. “We are taking some heat in New Jersey for that now, but I believe in testing.”
The capacity crowd of roughly 250 attendees paid $50 each to attend the event, while a few dozen spent $150 and up to get a photo with Mr. Christie.
The trip was Mr. Christie’s first visit to New Hampshire this year after traveling here five times in 2014. Mr. Christie, who until recently was chairman of the Republican Governors Association, campaigned repeatedly on behalf of New Hampshire officials last year.
While in New Hampshire earlier Monday, Mr. Christie held a private round table with state business leaders, some of whom are longtime New Hampshire Republican activists. He also met with state senators, including Republican state Senate President Chuck Morse.
“He said he intended to spend a lot of time in New Hampshire,” said Mr. Morse. “I would encourage him to run.”
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Can Science Solve Climate Change?
Feb 16, 2015 | The Washington Post
What happens if humans fail to cut carbon dioxide emissions enough to prevent worsening climate change? A new report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences contemplates some very unattractive — but potentially necessary — backup plans.
Ending deforestation seems like an obvious answer. But, the report found, planting more trees won’t do enough to suck CO2 out of the air. Instead, humans might have to use decidedly less natural methods to counteract global warming. The report discusses two options. Scientists could try to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Or they could reflect more sunlight back into space. This is called climate intervention or geoengineering, and it’s very controversial in scientific and environmental circles.
Geoengineering poses all kinds of problems. Directly removing carbon dioxide from the air is a very slow process, and the removed gas would need to be stored somewhere. Fertilizing the ocean with tiny bits of iron would encourage phytoplankton to grow and consume CO2, but it could alter the ocean environment in unknown ways. Spraying sulfur dioxide particles — which spew out of erupting volcanoes naturally — would reflect sunlight, but doing so would also thin the ozone layer, change rain patterns and potentially encourage international conflict. Other ideas, such as painting rooftops and streets white, might help. But no strategy to increase reflection would solve problems such as ocean acidification, which would continue so long as carbon dioxide levels are high.
The financial cost of researching, building and operating climate intervention projects would be formidable. Facilities to remove carbon dioxide from the air, the report notes, might well cost more than simply replacing polluting power plants with renewables. Cheaper techniques such as blasting sulfur dioxide into the sky would require perpetual effort absent serious cuts in carbon dioxide output. The longer the world hesitates to put global emissions on a downward slope, the harder the cleanup task will be.
Given the risks associated with climate intervention, it makes no sense to bet the climate on the ingenuity of future generations. But the planet should have a backup plan — or, at least, the beginnings of a backup plan. The National Academy report points out that policymakers and scientists have hardly embarked on the basic research, analysis and planning.
Further research could encourage people to put more faith in the potential of geoengineering, even though cutting carbon dioxide emissions remains the better option. That could help those who resist greenhouse emissions reductions. But there’s also a risk that those same people will win out anyway, leaving the world with little recourse absent a backup plan.
Congress has not been wise in its handling of the domestic discretionary budget over the past several years, shortsightedly declining to invest in important research and infrastructure. With the resources available, low-carbon energy technologies should remain the funding priority. But the National Academy report should at least put climate intervention on the table as worthy of some support.
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Oil Train Derailments Renew Questions About Safety
Feb 16, 2015 | LA Times
By Ralph Vartabedian
The derailments this week of two trains carrying crude oil have raised new questions about the adequacy of federal efforts to improve the safety of moving oil on tank cars from new North American wells to distant refineries.
A 100-car, southbound CSX train derailed Monday in a West Virginia river valley, destroying a home and possibly contaminating the water supply for downriver residents. A thundering fireball rose hundreds of feet above the community amid an intense winter storm.
On Sunday, an eastbound oil train derailed in Ontario, Canada, near the city of Timmins, engulfing seven cars in an intense fire and disrupting passenger service between Toronto and Winnipeg.
The most recent accidents follow a long string of crashes that have occurred amid an exponential increase in the amount of crude being transported by rail, as energy production booms across the U.S. and Canada.
Scrutiny of the rail industry began to intensify after the July 2013 accident in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in which a train carrying 72 tank cars of crude crashed into the small Canadian town's center and killed 47 people. It was followed by derailments and fires in North Dakota, Alabama, Virginia and elsewhere.
Data compiled by the federal government and the petroleum industry show that there have been more than a dozen derailments of trains carrying either crude or ethanol since 2009, not including several that occurred in Canada.
The West Virginia accident occurred Monday during intense cold and heavy snow near Mount Carbon, where the CSX rail line winds through a narrow valley carved by the Kanawha River about 60 miles southeast of Charleston. State of emergency declared in West Virginia after train derails, explodes
The train consisted of 109 cars carrying oil from North Dakota to Yorktown, Va., CSX said.
"At least one rail car appears to have ruptured and caught fire," a CSX spokesman said. "The derailment has resulted in the precautionary evacuation of nearby communities, and precautionary suspension of operations at the Cedar Grove and Montgomery water treatment plants."
State safety officials said some of the cars had ended up in the river and were burning.
Adena Village, a residential community along the river, was evacuated. One house was destroyed by fire.
The National Transportation Safety Board has increased its focus on oil tanker safety, and environmental groups are calling for tougher controls.
"Back-to-back fiery derailments involving crude oil trains should be an unmistakable wake-up call to our political leaders: Stop these dangerous oil trains and stop them now," said Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity.
The U.S. Department of Transportation responded last year, reducing speed limits in urban areas and calling for better brakes and stronger standards on rail tank cars so that they could withstand crashes without rupturing.
But the tank car rule is not expected to be unveiled until later this year, and it could be years before it has a measurable effect on safety, depending on how many of the existing 98,000 tank cars have to be retired or retrofitted.
Brigham McCown, former chief of the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, the federal agency that oversees tank car safety, said government needed to cut the number of derailments by such measures as improving brakes, including the introduction of electronically controlled brakes.
Current air brakes are applied sequentially on each rail car, meaning that it takes more than a minute for all the brakes to be applied on a 100-car oil train, he said.
"There are a lot of technical improvements we could be looking at, and I don't think we are," he said.
McCown said most of the derailments have occurred in extreme weather, when rain has washed out rail beds or when intense cold or heat distorts or weakens steel rails.
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Oil Tanker Derails In West Virginia, Triggering Evacuations
Feb 16, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Kris Maher
A train carrying crude oil derailed and burst into a fireball in rural West Virginia on Monday, forcing residents to evacuate and sending oil leaking into a river.
At least one tanker car, and possibly more, fell into the Kanawha River, some 30 miles from the state capital of Charleston. That prompted concerns about potential contamination of water-treatment facilities that serve two small downstream communities, according to Lawrence Messina, a spokesman for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety.
At least 14 tankers caught fire, according to Jennifer Sayre, Kanawha County manager.
Lt. Michael Baylous, a spokesman for the state police, said residents within a half mile of the scene, in Mount Carbon, were told to evacuate until further notice. A shelter had been set up at a nearby elementary school. He said the train caught fire before destroying a nearby home.
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency in Fayette County and neighboring Kanawha County Monday evening, saying he was doing so to ensure that affected residents had access to any resources they might need.
Gary Sease, a spokesman for CSX Corp. , which operated the train, said one person was being treated for “potential inhalation” but that no other injuries were reported. He said the company was working with the Red Cross and other relief organizations to address the needs of residents who had been evacuated, including providing shelter amid unusually cold temperatures.
The train consisted of two locomotives and 109 rail cars and was traveling to Yorktown, Va., from North Dakota, Mr. Sease said. He said the company was working to help put out the fire, determine how many cars had derailed and deploy environmental monitoring, including in the river.
It wasn’t clear what caused the derailment. State officials believe the train derailed at about 1:30 p.m. Monday near Mount Carbon, which has about 400 residents.
State health officials said the intakes for water systems that serve Montgomery and Cedar Grove, W.Va., would be shut as a precaution. One facility is operated by West Virginia American Water, whose treatment plant was contaminated early last year by a chemical spill on the Elk River near Charleston that disrupted water service for 300,000 residents.
“We’re obviously very mindful of that, and the Department of Health and Human Resources is responding because of the potential threat to drinking water,” Mr. Messina said.
Laura Jordan, a spokeswoman for West Virginia American Water, said the Montgomery water system serves about 2,000 customers. The company has asked residents to conserve water. Under normal use, the system has enough water to keep pipes pressurized for about 12 hours, she said.
Ms. Jordan said the water company didn’t believe the oil spill affected its water plant, but it was working with state officials to determine when its water intake could be reopened.
Each week, about three to four trains carrying crude oil travel through Fayette County where the accident occurred, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis late last year of records submitted by railroads to state officials.
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West Virginia Train Derailment Sends Oil Tanker Into River
Feb 16, 2015 | AP (in The Sacramento Bee)
By John Raby and Jonathan Mattise
A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed during a snowstorm in southern West Virginia on Monday, sending at least one tanker into a river, igniting at least 14 in all and sending a fireball hundreds of feet into the sky, officials and residents said.
Part of the derailed train slammed into a house, residents said. Officials evacuated hundreds of families and shut down two water treatment plants threatened by oil seeping into the river. And fires were still burning nearly nine hours after the accident, according to state public safety division spokesman Lawrence Messina. The plan is to let those tankers on fire burn out, he said.
David McClung said he felt the heat from one of the explosions at his home about a half mile up the hill.
"It was a little scary. It was like an atomic bomb went off," he said. One of the explosions that followed sent a fireball at least 300 feet into the air, McClung said.
One person was being treated for potential inhalation issues, but no other injuries were reported, according to a news release from CSX, the train company.
The state was under a winter storm warning and getting heavy snowfall at times, with as much as 5 inches in some places. It's not clear if the weather had anything to do with the derailment, which occurred about 1:20 p.m. along a flat stretch of rail about 30 miles southeast of Charleston. Federal railroad and hazardous materials officials are probing into the accident.
Responders at the scene reported at least one tanker went into the river, Messina said. Local emergency responders were having trouble getting to the house that caught fire, he said.
Fourteen to 17 tankers caught fire or exploded, said Jennifer Sayre, the Kanawha County manager.
Becky Nuckols heard the train hit the house directly across the river from her house in the community of Boomer.
"I thought it was a snow plow," she said. "That's what made me look out. All you heard was a big boom."
After calling 911 Nuckols said she ran outside and saw a man leave the house and take off running.
Officials opened shelters, while CSX reserved hotel rooms and opened an outreach center for affected residents.
The office of Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, which has issued a state of emergency, said the tanker cars were loaded with Bakken crude from North Dakota and headed to Yorktown, Virginia.
All but two of the 109 cars being hauled were tanker cars, officials said.
West Virginia American Water shut down a water treatment plant, located about 3 miles from the derailment, spokeswoman Laura Jordan. Another water plant downstream in the town of Cedar Grove also closed its intake, state health officials said.
The U.S. Transportation Department is weighing tougher safety regulations for rail shipments of crude, which can ignite and result in huge fireballs.
Responding to a series of fiery train crashes, including one this spring in Lynchburg, Virginia, the government proposed rules in July that would phase out tens of thousands of older tank cars that carry increasing quantities of crude oil and other highly flammable liquids. It's not clear how old the tankers were on the derailed train.
The Lynchburg train also was hauling Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to Yorktown, Virginia.
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